Thursday, August 20, 2009

Cast-Ons: Keeping Count


How many years have I been knitting, and counting and re-counting and fudging cast-on stitches? Too many. A few weeks ago, I figured out a way to avoid re-counting over and over again. This is probably obvious to most knitters, but here goes...

After every 20 cast-on stitches, place a marker. It's that simple. I like to use those stitch holders that look like big safety pins, because I can move them if I've miscounted. To start, cast-on 21 stitches. Then count 'em to be sure, and place the marker between the 20th and 21st stitches. Then continue to cast-on up to 41, and place another marker after the 40th stitch... and so on. Remove the markers as you come to them while knitting the first row.

Easy peasy.

This makes the Fortune-Teller Turban and the Prayer Shawl much easier to cast-on!

For more tips on knitting the Fortune-Teller Turban, see
3-Needle Bind-Off for Dummies
Add Fringe!
I Love Cable Cast-On
Swatch Wars
Checkerboard Stitch Fortune-Teller Turban

1 comment:

  1. Shucks! Much better than my solution which was to put a stitch marker (the sort that keeps dropping out way too often) after every 50th stitch. Which means that I keep re-counting those 50 stitches over and over! Much to my disgust because surely it ought to be easier to remember how many multiples of tens you just counted?
    Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, I'll look out for those safety pin like markers!

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